einstein

political one as well. He bristled at all forms of tyranny over free minds, from Nazism to Stalinism to McCarthyism.
Einstein’s fundamental creed was that freedom was the lifeblood of creativity. “The development of science and of the creative activities of the
spirit,” he said, “requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice.”
Nurturing that should be the fundamental role of government, he felt, and the mission of education. 21
There was a simple set of formulas that defined Einstein’s outlook. Creativity required being willing not to conform. That required nurturing free
minds and free spirits, which in turn required “a spirit of tolerance.” And the underpinning of tolerance was humility—the belief that no one had the
right to impose ideas and beliefs on others.
The world has seen a lot of impudent geniuses. What made Einstein special was that his mind and soul were tempered by this humility. He could
be serenely self-confident in his lonely course yet also humbly awed by the beauty of nature’s handiwork. “A spirit is manifest in the laws of the
universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble,” he wrote. “In this way
the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.” 22
For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence.
The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe. This is the defining quality of a “God who reveals himself in the
harmony of all that exists.” 23
Einstein considered this feeling of reverence, this cosmic religion, to be the wellspring of all true art and science. It was what guided him. “When I
am judging a theory,” he said, “I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.” 24 It is also what graced him with
his beautiful mix of confidence and awe.
He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent
patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.